Before any apartment or small business has been leased in the Union Terminal Warehouse, developers have checked off an important tenant: an in-house coffee shop for the building slated for apartments, offices and retail units.
Vantage Point Coffee Co. will be in the warehouse lobby.
The warehouse is at 700 E. Union St., near Jacksonville’s Eastside neighborhood and EverBank Stadium.
It is set to reopen at the end of the year.
The coffee shop will lease about 900 square feet of space, owner Leo Baker said. It will seat about 15 inside and have some patio seating. It will have four to five employees.
Columbia Ventures of Atlanta is the developer. It bought the building in 2018 for $4.6 million.
Columbia Ventures is transforming the nearly 300,000-square-foot warehouse built in 1913 into 228 apartments, 43 offices and 11 light industrial spaces.
When completed it will have cost $72 million, said Ryan Akin, development manager and partner at Columbia Ventures.
Pegasus Residential of Alpharetta, Georgia, is the leasing agent and property manager. Pre-leasing for apartments and businesses is scheduled to begin in September.
Baker opened his first Vantage Point Coffee in December 2023 at 1301 Monument Road, No. 21. Before that he roasted coffee beans at a small facility Downtown. He sold the beans online.
Once a week he roasts coffee for his shop and for customers to buy for home use. He procures beans from singular farms in Colombia, Ethiopia and Brazil. The beans remain segregated to ensure the beverage is pure to the country of origin.
Baker saw a roasting demonstration while on vacation and he was hooked. Through trial and error, he perfected the techniques needed to produce a mellow, smooth-tasting coffee.
His connection to the Union Terminal Warehouse started about the time the remodeling project was announced in 2019, Akin said. Baker reached out to Columbia Ventures about becoming the building’s coffee shop.
The old warehouse will have a ready-made customer base.
It is also on the Emerald Trail, a 30-mile multiuse paved path under development to connect urban neighborhoods with Downtown.
It will increase pedestrian traffic that otherwise would not happen, Baker said.
“I think it’s centrally located in a very fast-paced, fast-growing area of town, which is Downtown. There are a lot of projects coming to Downtown,” he said.
Akin was intrigued by Baker’s pitch and his business plan. Baker hadn’t opened the first coffee shop and he was already planning a second.
“We’ve tracked his first brick-and-mortar store. There are glowing reviews online. He seems to have been embraced by the community,” Akin said.
“We’re cheering for him, of course, as a landlord, but just also as a company that appreciates entrepreneurship and small businesses and his desires for growth and expansion.”
The coffee shop will not have a kitchen but will offer grab-and-go items like muffins, bagel sandwiches and danishes.
The city is reviewing a building-permit application for an estimated $250,000 build-out for a 915-square-foot space. Islands Architecture and Design LLC is the archit4ect.
Northeast Florida is seeing many new coffee shops and drive-thru kiosks enter the market, including Dutch Bros Coffee, Ellianos Coffee, Red Owl Coffee Co., Foxtail Coffee Co., Biggby Coffee, Scooter’s Coffee, 7Brew and others.
Baker is of two opinions about the trend.
“I think we are at the peak of different brands coming into the city. Instead over time, those brands will be expanding,” he said.